At a critical juncture, no one is at the helm of state’s HHS

LINCOLN — Gov. Dave Heineman once argued for putting the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services under a single chief executive officer.

He said the state’s largest agency would be more accountable and effective with that structure than it had been under committee governance.

Lawmakers approved the change as part of a 2007 reorganization of the agency.

Now, Health and Human Services has been operating without anyone in the top spot — not even an interim appointee — for nearly six months. Heineman has not filled the position since former CEO Christine Peterson retired Jan. 2.

Some lawmakers and advocates say the extended vacancy is troubling, given the number of things the agency must deal with.

Among those are care problems at a state institution for the developmentally disabled, proposals to privatize child welfare, and gaps in services to troubled children — highlighted by the number of parents who used the state’s safe haven law before age limitations were added.

“It’s a long time to be waiting,” said State Sen. John Harms of Scottsbluff. “Every time you turn around, there’s another problem. You’ve got a ship that doesn’t know if it’s going in the right direction.”

But the head of a nonprofit, nonpartisan group for officials with health and human services agencies said it takes time to find a person with the right combination of skills.

“Six months? That’s not unusual,” said Jerry Friedman, executive director of the American Public Human Services Association in Washington, D.C. “Finding absolutely the perfect fit is very, very important.”

Such jobs require special people who can combine management, policy and political expertise.

Still, Kathy Bigsby Moore, executive director of Voices for Children in Nebraska, said she was puzzled by the delay and worried that it leaves the agency vulnerable to infighting.

“I think that the governor needs to appoint someone,” she said. “That CEO position seemed critical to all the restructuring.”

Moore fears that the divisions within the agency — behavioral health, children and family services, developmental disabilities, Medicaid and long-term care, public health, and veterans’ homes — will revert to being separate, sometimes warring, bureaucracies.

Before the 2007 restructuring, three agency directors and a policy secretary shared power within the Health and Human Services System. The structure was criticized as lacking accountability.

The system had been created a decade earlier by combining five state agencies into three under a common administrative umbrella. Backers said the change would be more efficient and force agencies to work together on serving the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

The leadership vacuum is making it more difficult to fix problems at the troubled Beatrice State Developmental Center, said Sen. Steve Lathrop of Omaha, chairman of a legislative committee that oversees it.

The developmental disabilities division’s director spot also is vacant, and the Beatrice center has only an acting, part-time administrator.

“I’m not sure what the governor’s thinking or doing,” Lathrop said. “I haven’t even heard a good rumor about whether he’s closing in on somebody.”

Heineman has offered few clues in the past six months. He said last week that he hopes to fill the CEO job “in the near future.”

He said he has taken time with the search to find the best person for a job that involves managing a wide variety of programs, communicating with the public, and working with lawmakers, advocates and service providers.

The agency has an annual budget of $2.9 billion — about one-third of the state’s overall budget — and more than 5,500 full-time equivalent employees, or about one-third of all state workers.

“I want to find the right person and I’d rather take an extra couple weeks or an extra month or two, if it takes that, to find that person,” Heineman said.

That approach is smart, said Friedman, who is confident that Nebraska should be able to find a skilled CEO who would not be put off by the breadth of the agency or the problems confronting it. Neither situation is uncommon for state agencies, he said.

Nor does Friedman think salary should be a barrier. Peterson was paid about $130,000 a year.

“People usually are driven by mission,” he said. “They could all make more money consulting.”

Sen. Tim Gay of Papillion, chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee, also expressed confidence that the governor would find the right person to do the job.

In the meantime, he said, he has been able to work well with the individual division directors.

Contact the writer:

402-473-9583, martha.stoddard@owh.com